Another approach to assembly solver (A2plus)

[Kunda1]

That was an awesome example of open source collaboration. Bravo

[triplus]

Yep, @hamish2014 offered a solution and implemented the first generation of Assembly capabilities for FreeCAD. With A2plus we are now at the second generation and still can learn and reuse much work and effort invested in creating the first generation. We have and can still learn much from this process.

[manuelkrause]

Just some short question:
Why don't you make the two DOF icons (On+Off) and the two Part Labels icons (On+Off) each a single-click-switch one?
This would cleanup the WB's toolbar and may still be easily to understand.

BR, Manuel

[manuelkrause]

BTW. the DOF Labels seem to overlap each other quite often.
Getting unusable

EDIT:
Like this, no matter what degree of rotation:

Screenshot_20190416_200443.png (109.49 KiB) Viewed 2027 times

[kbwbe]

Why don't you make the two DOF icons (On+Off) and the two Part Labels icons (On+Off) each a single-click-switch one?
This would cleanup the WB's toolbar and may still be easily to understand.

Hi Manuel,
i will change this next days.

BR, Klaus

[kbwbe]

... the DOF Labels seem to overlap each other quite often.

The labels attach to the center of the boundingbox of each part. In your example, these points are all close together and therefore the labels overlap. Doing bigger assemblies (>50 parts), the labels usually are more distributed and they help to find parts, which are not completely constrained.

BR, Klaus

[Jee-Bee]

If you just show the labels of objects that are not complete constraint? than at least less clutter of labels which should give better results...

[manuelkrause]

... the DOF Labels seem to overlap each other quite often.

The labels attach to the center of the boundingbox of each part. In your example, these points are all close together and therefore the labels overlap. Doing bigger assemblies (>50 parts), the labels usually are more distributed and they help to find parts, which are not completely constrained.

BR, Klaus

Hi Klaus,
thank you for picking these up. With your explanation I understand the effects of the concept and...
I just had an idea regarding this, but don't know how easily this could be programmed or how useful it'll be in real use:

Why not have some random numbers depending on the size of the parts' boundingbox(es) to define an x,y offset for the label's position? This may ease this a little bit.

I've noticed, that (1) the labels don't get to top position when selected in tree view, and (2) they also don't reference any part name in their Combo View info. Wouldn't it make sense to get them up and add more info to the labels, there? (I know the info is shown in the Report View.)

Just some suggestions, just decide yourself what makes sense.

Best regards, and many thanks for your great work!

Manuel

[dan-miel]

I just had an idea regarding this, but don't know how easily this could be programmed or how useful it'll be in real use:

Why not have some random numbers depending on the size of the parts' boundingbox(es) to define an x,y offset for the label's position? This may ease this a little bit.

I had thought it would be nice if the labels could be selected in the graphics window and then hide them or move them to the side. I played with the program but I was not even able to make the labels selectable.

Dan

[JieFK]

Hi guys! Thanks for your time for programming this module.
I confess I have troubles to use it, mainly because I'm more used to TopSolid's workflow from work
I have a small question for you. I created a simple cube and a simple cylinder, then imported both in an assembly document. Now I want to put the cylinder on top of the cube by adding 2 constrains:
- "Bottom Cylinder" plane with "Top Cube" plane (this one is easy and I got it right)
- "Cylinder" axe with "Cube" central axe (don't know how to create this one)
I tried to create a datum axe on the cube but it does not appears on the assembly document)
Can someone please help me on this ?